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I am, sir,
Yours respectfully,
(Signed) W. R. Cremer."
The question arises, What prompted Cremer to invite Marx? Why was this
invitation not extended to many other emigrants who crowded London at the time
and who were closer to the Englishmen or the Frenchmen? Why was he chosen as a
member of the committee of the future International Association?
As to this, we can form only guesses. The most plausible seems to be the
following: We have already seen the part that the Educational Society of the German
workers was playing in London as the central meeting place of workers of various
nationalities. It became such a centre to an even greater extent when the English
workers themselves came to realise that it was necessary to combine with the
Germans in order to counteract the harmful consequences of the competition of
workers whom the English employers through their agents were luring into London.
Hence the close personal ties which existed between them and the members of the
former Communist League -- J. G. Eccarius, Friedrich Lessner, Pfander. The first two
were tailors, the third, a painter. They were all taking an active part in the London
trade-union movement and were well acquainted with the organisers and the leaders
of the London Trades Council. It is not difficult to understand how Odger and
Cremer came to know Dr. Marx, who during the affair with Vogt had renewed his
relations with the German Workers' Educational Society.
Marx's chief role in the First International, with the foundation of which he
had nothing to do, began after it was organised. He soon became the guiding spirit of
the organisation. The committee that was elected by the meeting of September 28,
had no instructions. There was no programme, nor constitution, nor even a name.
There was already existing in London such an international society, the Common
League, which offered its hospitality to the committee. From a reading of the minutes
of the committee's first meeting we gather that there were present also several benign
bourgeois representatives of this League. Some of these gentlemen suggested to the
committee that there was no need for a new organisation, others proposed the
organisation of a new international society which would be open not only to workers
but also to anybody to whom the cause of international solidarity and the
amelioration of the economic and political conditions of the toilers were dear. Only
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on the insistence of two workingmen, Eccarius and Whitlock, a former Chartist, was
it decided to christen the new society with the name of International Workingmen's
Association. This motion was supported by the Englishmen, among whom there were
a few Chartists, members of the old Workingmen's Association, the cradle of the
Chartist movement.
The new name unequivocally defined the distinctive character of the new
international association which forthwith shook off the well-meaning bourgeoisie,
who belonged to the Common League. The committee was told to look for other
quarters. Fortunately, they were successful in finding a small meeting room not far
from the German Workers' Educational Society, in a district populated by emigrants
and foreign workers.
As soon as the name was decided upon, the committee proceeded to compose
the programme and the statutes. There was one trouble; the committee was made up
of too many different elements. There were first of all Englishmen, who were divided
up into several groups themselves. There were trade unionists, former Chartists;
there were even ex-Owenites. There were Frenchmen, not very great adepts at
economic questions, but who considered themselves specialists along the lines of
revolution. The Italians, too, were very influential for they were headed by Giuseppe
Mazzini (1805-1872), the very popular old revolutionist, republican, but who was
also very religious. There were also the Polish emigrants. To them the Polish
question was paramount. There were, finally, several Germans, all former members
of the Communist League -- Eccarius, Lessner, Lochner, Pfander and Marx.
Various projects were brought before the committee. In the subcommittee on
which he was serving, Marx propounded his theses and it was finally resolved that he
present his project before the whole committee. Finally, when the committee
convened for the fourth time (November 1, 1864), Marx's draft with a small number
of editorial modifications was adopted by an overwhelming majority.
We must admit at the very outset that the draft, as it was adopted, contained
many compromises and concessions. Marx himself, in his letter to Engels, deplores
the fact that he was forced to introduce into the constitution and the programme
such words as Right, Morality and Justice, but, as he assures Engels, he managed to
insert these words in places where they would do least harm.
Yet this was not what contained the secret of Marx's success. His success in
having his propositions adopted almost unanimously by such a variegated group was
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the result of the extraordinary mastery with which the Inaugural Address of the
International was written. This was admitted even by Bakunin, Marx's most virulent
opponent. As Marx confesses in his letter to Engels, it was extremely difficult to
couch the communist view in a form that would prove acceptable to the labour
movement in its first crude stages. It was impossible to employ the bold
revolutionary language of the Communist Manifesto. Marx endeavoured to be
sweeping in content yet moderate in form. His success was unequivocal.
This Inaugural Address was written seventeen years after the Communist
Manifesto. These two documents were the work of the same author. Yet the historical
epochs in which, and the organisations for which, these two manifestoes were
written, were utterly different. The Communist Manifesto was written at the request
of a small group of revolutionists and communists for a very young labour
movement. These communists emphasised even then that they were not stressing
any principles which they wanted to foist upon the labour movement, but that they
were trying to crystallise those general principles which, irrespective of nationality,
represented the common interests of the proletariat of the entire world.
In 1864 the labour movement grew, and penetrated the masses. But as far as a
developed class consciousness was concerned it was much behind the revolutionary
vanguard of 1848. A similar retrogression was also to be observed among the leaders.
The new Manifesto had to be written in a manner which would take into account the
low level of proletarian class consciousness among the masses and the leaders, but
which would at the same time adhere to the basic principles laid down in the
Communist Manifesto.
Marx, in the Address, gave a classical example of "united front" tactics. He
formulated the demands and emphasised all the points upon which the working class
could and should unite, and on the basis of which a further development of the
labour movement could be expected. From the immediate proletarian demands
formulated by Marx the greater demands of the Communist Manifesto would
logically follow.
In all this Marx had, of course, a colossal advantage over Mazzini, over the
French revolutionists, as well as over the English socialists who were on the
committee of the International. He himself, without having changed his basic
principles, accomplished a monumental piece of work. By this time he had concluded
the first draft of his gigantic work and was engaged in putting his finishing touches to
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